Designing a disaster training program and examining its impact on the level of competence of nursing students

InTrodUcTIon: Core competencies required for a nurse to be ready for disaster response. The gaps in education make it difficult to recruit nurses prepared to respond to a disaster. The aim of this study was to design a disaster preparedness training program and examine its impact on the level of competence of nursing students. MATerIAL And MeTHods: A quasi-experimental design was used for 50 nursing students in semester 8 ran domly assigned to the experimental and the control groups. A disaster educational program for nursing students was developed based on Harden’s model. First need assessment was done and then the goals of the program were determined in the next stage, the educational content was organized based on the priorities of the students and teacher recommendations. In the next stage, the program was implemented and finally, the evaluation was carried out. resULTs: The mean age of the participant was 21.4 ± 2.14 and 57.1% of them were women. Compared with the control group, the experimental group showed a significant increase in disaster nursing competency after intervention (t = 12.37, p < 0.001). concLUsIons: This study provides evidence of the need and potential positive impact of disaster education opportunities for nurses.